


The Traveller's Ring

by ConstanceComment



Series: Narrative Terms [1]
Category: Girl Genius
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Child Abuse, F/M, Female Friendship, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, Mad Science, Multi, Mythology References, POV Female Character, Partial Mind Control, Soul Bond, Time Skips, Women Being Awesome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-14
Updated: 2015-11-14
Packaged: 2018-05-01 13:23:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,029
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5207405
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ConstanceComment/pseuds/ConstanceComment
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It shouldn’t be surprising, how much this hurts.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Traveller's Ring

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was written after Fisher King and the first two chapters of By the Hand of My Friend, but takes place before them, chronologically speaking. So I've ordered it as the new start of the series, since it's probably best to read this first before the rest, as it outlines the divergences that plant this series firmly in the realm of the AU.
> 
> See the end notes for content warnings.

It’s winter, when Agatha wakes. It’s winter, and she’s _alone_ , Martellus’ presence _nothing_ against the howling _absence_ in her chest that’s sprung into life inside her. It was only barely filling, when they got to the cathedral, whatever the Baron had done to Gil muting him in the connection the two of them shared with Tarvek.

Now, Agatha can barely hear anything at all, Gil more distant than he had been; underwater, warped. And Tarvek—

“He’s probably dead,” Martellus says, idly, like this _doesn’t concern him_ , like Agatha won’t _kill him where he stands_ —

The chain pulls her ankle, and only the reflexes Zeetha hammered into her prevent Agatha from crashing into the floor.

* * *

It shouldn’t be surprising, how much this hurts. Agatha had nearly cried at the edge of Mechanicsburg, when the wall came down between her and Gil, a wounded sound she’d never heard herself make slipping out of her like blood.

She hadn’t even known there was something _there_ between the three of them, just felt the loss like her heart going dark, or a lung shutting down.

“Did you feel that?” She’d asked Tarvek, whipping around to face him, only to see his pale expression, hopelessly turned towards the sky, as if with will alone he could see through the gathering clouds, the shattering clear in every line of his frame.

They hadn’t even _known_ that anything had carried over, from their resurrection. (And what else could it be, after they’d lived in each other’s bodies, borrowed one another’s strengths? What other thing could have been done to them, that they’d _both_ feel the lack of Gil like _dying_ , like _death_ , even across leagues of air?)

Now the loss is only _worse_ , and Agatha is in hostile territory now— Martellus is _smart_. Tarvek had warned her and Agatha _still_ didn’t expect it; he looks like a shaved bear and he acts _worse_ — his trick with ‘the touch of the king,’ and all that might have been easily countered but it’s still despicable, and horrifyingly clever.

‘You’d have been my adoring slave,’ he’d said, or something like it; it had been hard to hear under the wall of gray fog that crept over her. ‘But I need you _smart_.’ So instead of stealing her will from her, Martellus just made her dependant on his touch; it’s blind _luck_ that Agatha still had one of Tarvek’s wasp eaters, that Martellus was dumb enough to try to keep her locked up in a _lab_ , that Agatha’s spark reacts to anger like a fire reacts to oil.

If that monster wants Europa, he’s going to have to _kill her_ to get it. Martellus won’t be Storm King while she lives and breathes, and no matter _who_ the king becomes, Mechanicsburg will always, _always be hers first_. Agatha doesn’t belong to anybody and _damn him_ for trying to change that. Agatha should’ve hit him with the sharp side of the blade. She should’ve—

“You’re hitting that pretty hard, you know that, right?” Violetta asks as Agatha slams a metal plate into place, their escape plan starting to take shape under her hands.

“I am going to dismantle Tweedle’s _stupid face_!” Agatha snarls.

“Right then,” Violetta says, and takes another step back.

“You know,” Agatha thinks she hears Violetta say to Krosp, “it’s been a while since I hear _that_ particular threat, directed at that particular person. In this particular place, even.”

“You and the prince used to hide out in the basements?” Krosp asks, dry in the way that only cats can be.

“No one else ever wanted to be here,” Violetta says. “And if you got past the screaming, it was quiet.”

* * *

Once they’re outside, there’s no pretending, anymore, that this isn’t real. The winter sinks its claws into Agatha’s bones and makes a home for itself in the space that’s opened up inside her.

The only good thing she can think of is that Gil is _alive_ , that whatever’s wrong with Tarvek, they can fix it together, just like the last time. Martellus can pursue her as long as he likes— the longer he’s distracted, the more time Agatha will have to regroup, save her town, and destroy him.

Gil’s message, however, is a revelation, and not a kind one. Something inside her settles just to _hear_ him, but otherwise Agatha can only worry. He sounds like she feels, and she can only imagine— two and a half years, and worse than this.

That the clanks start shooting tar at anything that moves doesn’t dispel the notion that something is deeply wrong, however.

Watching Gil fight Martellus, watching him _shake Violetta like a ragdoll_ —

Agatha’s going to _strangle him_ , once she has the time to. But her people come first, they have to, always. So, Paris it is, and by train.

Once aboard, getting Zeetha and Violetta back is a gift Agatha had forgotten to expect. It’s the people who love her that remind her best why it is she cannot stay, that the answers she’s looking for are nowhere near Mechanicsburg.

“What did Gil say to you, out in the snow?” Agatha asks Violetta, once everyone else has gone to sleep.

“He asked where the others were,” Violetta tells her. “He wanted to know where you were, where _Tarvek_ was,” she pauses for a moment. “It— I’d believe it, if Auntie is right and he was looking for the both of you. He wanted to know why I was afraid,” Violetta adds, speaking quietly in the cabin’s low light. “I don’t even think he _knew_.”

* * *

When he arrives after the battle, the way that Gil holds her is a moment Agatha wants to sink into forever. His grip is light around her waist and shoulders, as if he thinks she is the air. Gil smells like cordite and brass and clean wind, something _clicking_ back into place between them that makes them both sag into the hold.

“Agatha,” he says, and her name sounds like a prayer, like this, so soft and so quiet.

She squeezes him and breathes deeply, pressing her ear against his heartbeat, looking for it, proof of life.

 _I missed you_ , she thinks, but won’t say aloud with an audience this large crowded all around them.

As she pulls back, Gil flinches, clutching his head with a grunt of pain. Agatha nearly stumbles with the force of the blow that severs them, like a dropwall falling on a stream.

When she looks up, whoever it is that's looking back at her out from Gil’s eyes _isn’t him. “You,”_ he says, and that voice is not his either, only _like_ it, close and not right and Agatha _can’t feel him again_ —

 _No_ , Agatha thinks, _rage_ sweeping through her like a fire.

“I need you to look at this—” she tells him, taking a step back out of his reach. “Right away. Here,” she hands him the blueprints for Ulm’s new shell. “What do you think?”

“It looks like a modified _Si Vales Valeo_ ,” the imposter tells her. He should _know that_ , they _built this together_ , he should, he should—

“No one _here_ has any experience with it,” Agatha tells him, and already knows that whoever this is, he won’t prove Agatha wrong.

“Organic to mechanical,” he comments, “ _intriguing_ ,” and his smile is right but he doesn’t remember and—

Agatha thrums into the spark, like a dive into deep waters. One step at a time, she promises herself. She has to know what’s wrong before she can fix it.

* * *

Agatha doesn’t always know what Lucrezia gets up to when she hijacks Agatha’s body. She catches impressions, emotions; victory, loss, triumph— an endless wave of bitter petulance. But no plans, nothing concrete.

All the way down, like this, whatever connection she had left with the boys is ruined, inaccessible to her. Before it had always felt like a nightmare, dreaming without power or control. Now, with her mother holding the reins, the corner she locks Agatha in is closer to hell than to darkness.

 _Alone_ , her heart wails, _alone, alone, alone. Lost forever, nothing left. Too slow, too late, too bad._

And, above it all, like a flash of light seen beneath darkened waters: recognition, bitterness, a twisted fondness that Agatha’s felt from Lucrezia before, and only directed at one man.

 _Klaus_ , her mother hums, and internally Agatha screams, beating on the walls of her cage at the hypocrisy, the unfairness of it all. It’s no wonder Agatha can barely feel him, in the world. It’s no wonder at all.

* * *

The smelling salts that Violetta uses are pungent and sharp, burning Agatha’s sinuses.

“My lady, you need to _wake up_ ,” she hisses, worry coloring the words. There’s fear on her face, too— “I don’t think the cake is going to keep them down for long,” Violetta continues, and Agatha turns her head to the left, and remembers how it was she’d fallen asleep.

“What about Martellus?”

“Oh him?” Violetta asks. “ _Him_ I concussed.”

“Do you have anything on you that can keep them asleep?” Agatha asks her.

“I’m a _smoke knight_ ,” Violetta says, scandalized even as she waves her vial under Zeetha’s nose.

“Right, sorry,” Agatha apologizes, watching as Zeetha comes up swinging and Violetta hops backwards with ease, landing on a knocked over chair.

“I’m not sure how long I can keep _him_ down, though,” Violetta allows, frowning.

“Then we’ll just have to work quickly,” Agatha says, and turns to her hosts. “Would you mind letting me borrow your labs? It’s—” _nothing bad_ , she wants to say, but they have no reason to trust her, the wary looks on the monks’ faces saying as much. “I’d be fixing a mess,” she says instead, and hopes, _hopes_ that they believe her.

For a moment, Agatha can feel the weight of judgment upon her, Brother Vadaxxus and the Abbot standing like a wall between her party and the exit.

“What do you need?” The Abbot asks, after a moment, and the relief could kill her if she weren’t still shaking with rage.

“Your permission,” she tells him, then turns to Zeetha. “Can you get him?” Agatha asks her.

Stretching her arms over her head, Zeetha nods. “I can,” Zeetha assures her, and does so, lifting Gil over her shoulders the way the fire brigade in Beetleburg used to take the unconscious from burning buildings.

“I’m going to need shackles,” Agatha tells Vadaxxus, “and more of that sedative, if you wouldn’t mind. You have my thanks.”

“Peace,” the Abbot tells her, “would be thanks enough.”

“I’ll try,” Agatha says. It’s all she _can_ do, at this point.

* * *

Asleep, Gil almost looks the way that Agatha remembers. His skin is sallow instead of gold, and he’s got a beard growing in, but— he doesn’t look a _damn thing_ like his father.

But the illusion is only that; Gil’s hair is lank, and his cheeks slightly sunken, the hollows under his red-rimmed eyes so deep Agatha shudders to think how long he’s spent awake. For god’s sake; Agatha has Gil _shackled to a chair_ , and all she can think of is Martellus, how awful it had been to wake somewhere and not know why, or how.

When Agatha still used to cry over everything that frustrated her, the _pain_ that came from solving (failing to solve) a problem, Gil would’ve been something she’d have cried over.

Now, though. _Now_ Agatha has _options_ , and power, and something (so many things) to lose.

“First switch,” she says quietly, but with force, her voice ringing with static.

* * *

Gil was _there_ when Agatha first started to spark. All the wild, first exploration of it, light and music and _flying_ , the world open and new for all she’d been kidnapped. She’d been worried about her parents, worried about her family, but— Gil took her _dancing_ , so genuinely excited just to have someone to _share with_ , that it charmed her despite how firmly he had his foot wedged into his windpipe.

He wanted— Gil had wanted to see what Agatha could do when she had _everything_. And Agatha knows, (can _feel_ ) that there is no _everything_ without Gil, anymore, just the same as Tarvek’s absence _burns_ in her like a missing beat in her pulse, just the same as losing Gil to his father had been like losing a limb.

When Agatha works, the whole world narrows into points of light, Gil, her own hands, the arc of lightning into silver all that she can see, all that she cares to.

In the stories her mother used to tell her, when Agatha was young and her head hurt to think too long, and she still needed to rest frequently, the heroine was never alone. Even in enemy lands, and fae territories she had companions, the people who saw worth in her, often when no others would, for her grace of her kindness or her sense.

It used to be a comfort to her, as a child, to think that she could one day _be_ those women, back before Agatha learned to hate her failings and herself. She’d thought that (one day) she’d live in the world of color again, that someone would love her besides her parents, that her uncle would return to explain his long absence.

Only two of those things have happened, but Agatha is _better_ than her mythology. She promised herself that, in the chapel, in the room of bone and the bridge in the air— on her own terms, or not at all. Her castle, her town, her body, her life. She doesn’t need a traveller’s ring to go home again; she just needs her wits, some research, a wrench. Agatha doesn’t need _everything_ to save Gil; she’s no pure maiden to cry over him, or weave shirts from thistledown.

But she can love him. And she can do this, at least.

* * *

Agatha’s locking the choker when Gil starts to stir.

“Hi,” Agatha greets him, voice thick as she puts the key in her breast pocket, the solid ring of silver still warm under her hands.

“Agatha?” Gil asks, and his eyes won’t track, still scanning desperately over her face.

“I’m here,” she tells him, and brings her hands up to his face, running her thumbs under his eyes, her fingers at the curve of his skull. “I’m here,” she says, “I missed you.”

“’M gonna wake up soon,” Gil slurs, leaning his head forward to press into her palms. “Y’r always gone when I wake up.”

“I’m real,” Agatha promises him, (and oh, god, two and a half years), pressing a kiss to his forehead, over those unseeing eyes. They really must’ve overdosed him with sedatives; she hadn’t been sure, how much was _too much_ , only known that she couldn’t let him wake while she was still working. “You need to find Tarvek,” Agatha tells him intently, and begins to pull away. “This should keep you safe, I _promise_ , and he can fix the rest— so, I need you do that for me, alright?”

Something almost like _despair_ washes over Gil once she steps back, like blood over skin. “Wait—” he starts, and tries to stand, crashing to the ground, jerked back by the thick chain that binds him to his chair by the wrist.

Agatha leaves the room to banging, shouting, her heart breaking at the sound of it; Gil coming to life again, strapped to the furniture as she _leaves him behind_ for the wolves’ den _again_ , only this time armed as well as defended.

 _Be safe_ , she prays, and does not turn back, each step as sure as the last, Violetta and Zeetha falling into line. _Find him; be safe_.

 _Come back to me_.

* * *

The train ride to Paris is nearly more bitter than the one that preceded it. Agatha doesn’t even know if Gil’s choker is going to _work_. It’s not like Agatha’s been able to take her own apart, and all her memories of watching her uncle work are indistinct, lost in a dream. All Agatha has is conjecture and determination, the voice inside her that would rather die than fail.

“He’s strong,” Zeetha tells her, sixteen hours into the thirty-six it will take from the fortress to Paris.

“I know,” Agatha says. And he is, she _does_ know; she’d lived halfway inside him for a while, during the _Si Vales Valeo_ , all three of their souls detached from their bodies, kept safe in the others’.

“You’re still moping, though,” Zeetha points out.

Agatha presses her face into her knees, sitting backed up against the headboard of her bed. “I’m just _tired_ ,” she explains, unable to stop the bleakness that slips in. “I slept ten hours and I _still_ want more.”

“You’re sitting on a bed,” Zeetha tells her, not unkindly. “And we won’t be where we need to be for nearly a day, no matter _how_ fast you made the train.”

“What if I lose him again?” Agatha asks her, voice so quiet even _she_ barely hears it, the fear she’s kept at bay for what feels like _months_ rising up, threatening to swallow her.

Zeetha shifting audibly off her chair, the bed moves when she sits on it, her arm warm around Agatha’s shoulders. “Then you’ll find him,” Zeetha says. “Just like before.”

“That simple?” Agatha asks.

Zeetha snorts. “Not even a little bit. But you could make it that way, if you wanted it.”

“Can you stay until I fall asleep?” Agatha ask her.

“If you think I’m letting you out of my sight again so soon, my zumil, we _really_ need to work on your common sense. Though,” Zeetha adds, not unkindly, “you might want to actually lie down, if you’re going to sleep.”

In her chest, Agatha feels Gil like a song through a vacuum glass, vibrations lost without air. Where Tarvek was there is only vacuum itself, something that never used to hurt and once was just called _living_ , the way that every living person felt, without two men to follow them back from the land of the dead.

 _Come back to me_ , she prays again, casting her lifeline out for whatever will hear. _Please, please— come back to me_.

**Author's Note:**

> Content warnings: Mind control - Gil and Agatha are both being whammied by their own parents; Child abuse - _their own parents_ ; Non-con drug use - almost everyone gets knocked out via cake sedative, and Agatha prolongs this in order to get Gil alone so she can Science on him, and Gil accordingly has no way of opting in or out of that either; Non-con body alteration - Tweedle makes Agatha physically dependent on his touch.


End file.
